


In Too Deep

by Flynncantation



Category: South Park
Genre: Addiction, Anxiety, Craig is enamoured, Depression, Drug Abuse, Heartache, M/M, Sexual Content, Tweek is a mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 20:04:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14817995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flynncantation/pseuds/Flynncantation
Summary: Love can overcome many things, and Craig is going to make damn sure it’s going to overcome this fresh hell.





	In Too Deep

**Prologue**

An addict poisoned for the first six years until they need more and more and more to chase that dreaded, wonderful high is unlikely to come out the other side with all faculties intact. And when that continues for another three years until at some point, something, or someone, snaps…?

Craig had had it. It was get help or get lost. Of course, Craig had never once meant that, no matter how many times he’d said it, which was perhaps part of the reason why Tweek had never quite managed to claw his way out the other side of a blissful illusion-soaked hell.

Tweek tried to swap one defeating addiction for another. And to his credit, it wasn’t always an addiction he switched out that dirty habit for: meditation, mindfulness, long walks. At times he could make a week, draw on something in his gut telling him this monster is going to destroy him from the outside in, leech the life and soul from him until nothing of him is left but a dirty, crushing, all-consuming addiction.

At first it was Ket (the “dissociative anaesthetic - Tweek looked it up, briefly felt like more of a lowlife scummer for thinking that sounded cool). Before he knew it as Ketamine, he knew it as Special C, Cat Valium and other nonsensical names tossed around by back-alley dealers and the occasional high-schooler trying to play Big Boy.

For a while, it kinda worked out for him. Take a bump and get that hazy, floating sensation. But take too much? The Horrors, Tweek called it. Paranoia, anxiety, and uncontrollable, terrified tears.

He was taught the only way to come back up was coke. So, that came next. But then it was too many lines, and Tweek would sleep even less than usual, and the deafening thud of his heart inside his ribcage thundering like wild horse-hooves, well that sent him scrambling back for more of that nose-singeing K, just so he could sleep, for once just sleep.

Two addictions instead of one.

“Are you fucking stupid!?” Craig had raged when he found out, thinking in his naivety that Tweek was doing such a great job, coping so well. Tweek was attending therapy, getting medical help. It was Craig’s naivety and desperation that sought and believed the changes in Tweek’s face, the freshness to him, the glow in his skin, the bounce in his step he’d never in a million years figured was just another symptom of a coke-high. Craig had never made a habit of being drug-savvy.

But it all made sense when he found out. “That’s why you didn’t want me to come with you!” he continued, Tweek a balling mess in the passenger seat of Craig’s car. An accidental text to him had revealed the full truth of Tweek’s battle, a text that was meant for Kenny, not Craig. Kenny-fucking-McKormick, Craig’s least favourite asshole.

“Stop yelling at me!” Tweek yelled in return, voice thick with snot and guilt. He grappled with his seatbelt and lost, instead helplessly clawing at the door lock. Child locks were a blessing, Craig thought. Sometimes it felt like he was fighting with an unruly, tantrumming two-year-old.

“But you don’t listen, Tweek!”

With both fists Craig had grabbed him by his hair, yanking him to face him. “You’ve been lying to me this whole damn time and I’ve lapped every lie up like a goddamn idiot!”

“I know. I know!” Tweek cried, letting Craig frustratedly tug his hair because he deserved it anyway, didn’t he? He should feel the pain.

Using his too-long shirt sleeve he wiped the sloppy mess dribbling from his nose, trying in vain to sniff the rest back in.

Craig still thought he was beautiful. What was the phrase: “A hot mess”? That suited him down to a tee in that moment, inappropriate as the thought was, lingering and lustful and hard and dark.

“You’re killing yourself,” Craig said, calmer now, despite the tears shivering at the corners of his eyes. “I can’t...won’t watch this happen. Understand me?”

“Y-you’re gonna leave me?”

“No. No… I’m not gonna leave you.” Craig took a deep, steadying breath, relaxing his grip on Tweek’s hair. Instead he reached for his hands, squeezing them, wetting his dry lips with a quick swipe of his tongue. He took a beat, two, three, four. “Babe. You have got to do this for yourself.”

“I will. I’m gonna. I promise,” Tweek had said, nodding quickly in succession. He was holding Craig’s hands now, both pairs trembling.

“You always say that,” Craig answered, his voice soft and small, wanting so much to believe him. They’d parked in the lot of their local Denny’s, Craig having known something wasn’t right when he picked Tweek up after arranging to eat pancakes with bacon and heaps of syrup. Tweek had been chipper, flopping into the passenger seat with a grin as wide as the moon when just hours before he’d been freaking out about how aeroplanes manage to stay in the air.

“I mean it this time:”

“You always say that, too.” Craig’s anger had fizzled to a dying ember. Instead, he felt some semblance of relief that at the very least he knew the truth. Or some of it. “Do you want to tell me anything else?”

Tweek jerked like a startled guinea pig, looking up into his eyes and quickly away, training them on anything but. Craig found it impossible to tell if those impulsive responses were signs of guilt or a simple quirk.

“Tweek?” he pressed, trying to sound understanding, coaxing. Tweek’s temper then, and now, was volatile; every mis-spoken word is an attack, every minor slight a disaster, the end of it all, life isn’t worth living anymore!

Craig long ago learnt to put himself inside Tweek’s head, but for even him there are places he can’t fathom, nuances he can’t pick up on. It terrifies him, what he doesn’t know, the things he doesn’t see.

And there are many things he doesn’t see.

“Tweek,” Craig had said, severe but soft. “You need to tell me everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> I should probably finish my other ones but this has been digging at me... :) I’m Flynntervention on tumblr if anyone wants to say hey!


End file.
